…that you spent so much time consumed in busyness that you forgot to take a shower?

I know.

gross.

anywho…

Here’s a random rundown of our lives over the past few weeks, sprinkled with a little bit of crazy…

• We signed listing paperwork with our new realtor today.  We go back on the market first thing Monday morning.  We have sliced our price, allowing us to compete head on with the local foreclosures.  We finally had a “normal” sale in our neighborhood close last month…one that was on the market at the same time that we were…and it’s a good comp for us.  Based on the sale price of that one, our new asking price should be right on it.  We think.  And hope.
• I’ve had a lot of catching up to do for our Children’s Ministry.  Our leadership team and their families (including ours) managed to go down for the count (over a period of three weeks (!) ) with the puke bug and some type A flu thrown in for good measure.  All this occurred as we were adding first service classes to our schedule.  It all came out in the wash anyway, and the transition has been surprisingly smooth.  We are still a good three weeks behind on our goal to complete our new classroom addition, but stand a good chance of bringing the thing to the point of functionality within the next week or so.
• I bought one of those steam mop thingies…a Bissel.  I love it.  It is my new best-est, best-est friend.  I want to hug him and squeeze him and call him George.
• It’s that time of year again where I find myself begging the question…Where should Noah go to school next year?  The answer is, of course, complicated by the fact that we really don’t know where we will be living.  We hope that we will finally be up in the Triangle, but that’s what I thought last year, so there’s that.  I’m exceedingly happy with Noah’s current placement…he’s got an outstanding teacher that he’s been with for four years now.  Thankfully, Florida law would allow us to transfer Noah straight back to his current placement…even if we live in Lake County.  I just don’t know how the 80-90 minutes of driving every day would play out in our family.  We do have the option of pulling Noah out of public school and placing him in a private school, thanks to Florida’s McKay Scholarship.  (The state would take his current funding level…which is somewhere between $18-20,000 per year…and allow us to use the money as a scholarship for a private school of our choosing.  Pretty sweet, huh?)  I’m actually thinking about looking at one of the private autism schools here in Orlando…just in case.  I figure that we’ll be driving anyway…why not explore all options?
• I really want a pair of those pajama jeans.  Whoever thought of such a wondrous thing is a freaking genius.

Well…that’s all for now.

I hope that you all are doing well and have a fabulous weekend…

So last Friday night, the black plague…aka the “puke bug”…invaded our home.

Noah was up first.  Sick all night Friday and well into Saturday.  By Saturday evening, all was calm.

I kept the boys home from church on Sunday.  By Monday afternoon, I thought that the rest of us were in the clear.

How silly of me.

Monday afternoon, Isaac went down.  I soon followed.

It was u-g-l-y.

And I still ain’t right.  I woke up this morning with major vertigo and had to return to bed for three hours.  Just. freaky.

I feel like I’ve lost a week of my life.  I was literally in bed for 36 hours straight…from Monday evening until Wednesday afternoon.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been that sick.

So…that’s that.

Oh…here’s an interesting sidebar…

After hearing on the news that the norovirus is making the rounds, I googled the word yesterday afternoon to check on the incubation period on the thing.  (PRAYING that Doug continues to escape.)

A number of articles popped up…one of which immediately caught my eye.

Evidently, the norovirus has been responsible for several puke-fest outbreaks leading to restaurant closures over the years.  One of the restaurants that had to be shut down by a local health department several years ago has a most curious and evidently appropriate name.  The restaurant?  (wait for it…)

The Chuck-o-rama.

not. kidding.

And I’m just wondering here…

Who names their all you can eat buffet the “Chuck-o-rama”?!

just. gross.

anywho…

I have managed to keep up with most of the Olympics.  (Easy to do when you are lying on the couch praying for death to come quickly.)

How much does it rock this year?  Shaun White is a veritable freak show.  I could watch that guy do those crazy tricks all day.  And Lindsey Vonn and all those crazy downhill chickies, getting laid out all splat and jumping right back up to do it again?  Man…I’ve got nothin’ but love and respect.  Amazing.

Well…that’s all I’ve got for now.

I hope that everyone in your house is happy and healthy and that you all have a wonderful weekend…

So on Monday, Kris, Lori and I loaded the kids (minus Noah, who was at school) in the van and headed over to Tampa to spend the day at the Florida State Fair.

We had a great time.  We toured Cracker Country (where Isaac saw a fabulous model train display in the train depot), looked at a bunch of arts and crafts and did the midway thing.

One of the livestock tents was set up to cater to children, with lots of momma and baby animals.  At one end of the tent, a cow was giving birth.  They had some bleachers set up where you could sit and watch.  Thankfully, Isaac wasn’t interested in the cow and wanted to go see the chicks that were hatching.  I happily obliged as I figured that it would be infinitely easier to explain a chick coming out of an egg as opposed to a calf coming out of…

You know you’re touring with a pregnant lady when you are walking through the fairgrounds, spouting off all of the entertainment options for the day and all that she keeps saying in response to your efforts to make plans is “oooo…fried oreos.”  “oooo…fried butter.”  “ooooo….funnel cakes”.  “oooo….fried candy bars”.

I’m just sayin’.

I wasn’t feeling any of the fried sweet stuff.

My craving du jour was SALT and I mean lots of it.  So I picked up a big container of fair fries, doused them with vinegar and salt and poured ketchup all over them.

heaven.

Here’s a few pictures from our day…

So that was our Monday.

On Tuesday morning, Doug flew to Ohio for a gig, which was supposed to occur Tuesday night.

Because of the mean and nasty snow storm that blew through those parts Tuesday and Wednesday, the schedule changed at the last minute and the event ended up being rescheduled for last night (Wednesday).  Since the airlines are playing catch-up from the storm, the guys were stuck up there until late this afternoon.  Thankfully, the client sprang for first class tickets just to get them on a plane…otherwise they might not have made it home tonight.  So…for only the second time in their 16 year group history, the guys were snowed in at a gig.  Doug missed church tonight…(boo! big ugly snow storm)…but one of our leaders was ready and willing to step in and teach.

The boys have done really well while Doug has been gone…mostly because my parents have stepped in to help as they always do .  I knew that I had a challenge on my hands when a 24 hour gig suddenly expanded to 3 days, but my parents helped keep them busy and distracted.  Woo-hoo for that.

Well…that’s about it for our crazy week.

I hope that you are enjoying yours…

So I’m not sure that I’ve gone this long between postings since I started this little blog 2 1/2 years ago.

Time is flying and the days are a blur.  I truly cannot believe that 10 days have passed since I last sat down to write something.

Anywho…

Since I still have a stack of things on my agenda today, I’m going to activate my bullet function and do the list thing.

Here we go…

• We’re in the middle of a most exciting time in the life of our church.  We’ve been bursting at the seams during our second service, and now we’re about to add a full Children’s Ministry to the first service, which previously had none.  This will kick in February 21…just two weeks from now.  We’re going to shift our service times 30 minutes later to help make that early service easier for folks with kiddos to get to.  And we’re trying to finish the build-out of the back room in time for it all.  Whew.  It’s some crazy, busy stuff…but a total blast.
• God blew us away this week.  With our COBRA coverage expiring on March 20th, the church board asked me to begin to look for an insurance policy for our family.  After shopping for private policies 17 months ago…and spending untold hours applying and talking to different insurance companies…I learned that both Doug and Noah are uninsurable under any private policy.  Group coverage was…and forever will be (unless things change) their only option.  So after following a few leads from other Calvary Chapels, I contacted a company in California that writes policies for churches…and does a lot of business with Calvary Chapels.  When I made first contact with the company, I was discouraged to learn that their policies are medically underwritten…meaning that they might deny coverage for certain health conditions.  I was quite upfront with the representative…spelling out all of our medical history and Doug and Noah’s history of being denied for health and life insurance.  He very kindly told me to fill out the application anyway…to be as detailed as possible…and that they would look over it.  Imagine our shock and awe and THANKFULNESS when we found out a few days ago that they are offering our family a wonderful group policy with very competitive rates.  We are still waiting on the details to be finalized, but our new policy should kick well before our COBRA coverage expires.  Can I get a woo-hoo? God is GOOD.
• The above paragraph means that I actually can look forward to the end of my endometriosis/adenomyosis/JUST RIP IT ALL OUT saga.  Our new policy will be with Blue Cross/Blue Shield and guess who is in network with BC/BS?  Yep.  The endometriosis/laparoscopic supracervical hysterectomy specialist in Atlanta that I would like to go to.  How awesome is that?!  When the pain that I have been dealing with for so long woke me up at 5 o’clock this morning, I started smack talking the thing.  “Enjoy it now, you little freaky uterus”…said I.  “Your days are numbered”.  “You are going to get chopped up and yanked out through my belly button and you ain’t gonna bother me NO MORE”.  “HA”.
• I’m just sayin’.
• So have you heard about how gold prices are really high right now and how you can sell your gold at a jewelry shop or gold party or mail it in for cash?  Yeah, so have I.  I’ve thought about it, but didn’t move on it until my Mom told me how she went to a local jewelry shop and made over 300 bucks selling old scrap pieces of jewelry…most of it broken or missing the matching piece.  I went home and promptly dug out some of my old 80’s bling…a gold coin ring (?!) and a groovy gold bracelet.  I took it to the jeweler and he gave me $103 cash for the pieces.  Nice.  I’ll really miss that gold coin pimp ring, but I think that I can learn to live without it.
• I booked another camp week for Noah at the Halo Clinic.  My Mom, Noah and I will be going the last week of March to work with Erika.  Can’t wait.  Right now I’m reading the Boxcar Children with Noah and my Mom is studying the Middle Ages with him.  I’m still having a hard time figuring out how to get him to spell for me, but he is nailing it on the comprehension end of it all.  So I guess it’s just a matter of time.

Well…there’s lots more, but I really need to keep moving.

Ya’ll have a great weekend, and hopefully it won’t be another 15 days before I’m back here again…

So for the past few months, I seem to have lost my blogging mojo.

I’m not really sure why.  Busyness is an easy explanation…I just don’t have a whole lot of time to get on the computer lately.  But I’ve always been busy so I’m not so sure that the answer is that simple.  Writer’s block…half-baked brain…who knows?

anywho…

Here’s a little bit of what’s been going on…

The Calvary Chapel Pastor’s Conference was amazing…Doug and I were there Monday-Wednesday.  8 of our church leaders and their wives came too…it was an incredible time of teaching and fellowship and FUN and bonding.  The boys stayed with my parents, which was of course a huge blessing for us…and for the boys.  They had a blast.

Doug is still getting extra work, even though the busy Christmas season is over.  Dapper Dans has called him four times since the new year and his group just booked an out of town corporate gig next month.  Woo-hoo for that.

Our house is just about ready to go back on the market.  We’ve got a few decisions left to make about pricing and realtor stuff, but hopefully we’ll wrap that up quickly and get back in the game.  Our neighborhood market got very interesting over the weekend when our next door neighbor’s realtor screwed up his price drop and listed his house on the MLS…for three days…at $3.95 million.  We had quite a few cars doing the slow drive past his house over the weekend and I’m quite sure that they were all very confused.

Today at Publix, there was an extremely pregnant young lady checking out in front of us.  To my horror, Isaac looked over, pointed and hollered, “WHOA, MOM!  That’s a big ‘ol belly!”  As my eyes bugged out and my mouth dropped to the floor, he continued…”How come she has such a big ‘ol belly?”

oh. my.

Shouldn’t a trap door come standard in all grocery stores?

Well…thank you Lord…the lady with the big ‘ol belly was fully engaged in conversation with the cashier and did not seem to notice Isaac’s little outburst.  And…thankfully…my quick and matter of fact answer that “she’s got a baby in her belly” elicited only a few eye blinks from Isaac in response.  I did NOT want to get into the “hows” and “whys” of the baby in the big ‘ol belly on this particular day.

Well…that’s my occasional post for today.

I hope that your week is going beautifully…